GoldenEye 007
GoldenEye 007 was launched early in the life of the Nintendo 64. It was remarkable - an excellent first-person shooter game, and a great multiplayer game (still one of the best), on a console. In many ways, GoldenEye paved the way for console FPS games to come, especially Rare's second N64 shooter, Perfect Dark.
GoldenEye's success was due primarily to its faithful transition of the spirit of Bond. Relying partially on the player's stealth sneaking, and partially on his license to kill, GoldenEye is the definitive James Bond.
The story of GoldenEye 007 (the movie and the game) begins with a mission nine years ago, in which James Bond (007) and his partner Alec Trevelyan (006) infiltrate a Russian facility to destroy containers of noxious nerve gas. However, the duo is caught in the act by the Russian military; while Bond escapes, Trevelyan is left behind and shot in the head by general Arkady Ouromov. Nine years later, Ouromov comes up again in an odd story involving an organization called Janus, a Siberian satellite control station, and the GoldenEye, a satellite which can fire an electromagnetic pulse great enough to disable all electronics in an entire city. Bond's video game mission to save the world features, builds on, and diverges from the movie in various instances.
Typical first person shooters, even today, focus heavily on simply blasting your opponents to smithereens. James Bond, on the other hand, prefers subtlety; and this was factored into GoldenEye. The main focus of the missions isn't to shoot everything that moves, but to take it slow, plan your route, and snipe your victims covertly, so as not to attract enemy attention to yourself. Of course, in some situations, you'll still have to shoot like a madman, but these aren't exceptionally common. GoldenEye has a wide array of weapons to offer - handguns, machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, knives, and tons of Q's useful gadgets. But, true to the genre, even GoldenEye's story mode is overshadowed by its multiplayer. Up to four people at once can play, with dozens of different weapons (sorted into several sets), and in several different arenas. Selectable character models for multiplayer are based on James Bond characters, and while some of them are from the game's one-player missions (like James Bond, Alec Trevelyan, and generic soldiers), some were made just for multiplayer (like Oddjob and Jaws).
GoldenEye's graphics, being from the early days of the N64, are significantly less than impressive. They're coherent, though, and you'll always be able to tell when someone's shooting at you (and usually, where they're shooting from) by the graphical bullet effects. Sound effects fit the game perfectly, and the music is catchy, from a remixed 007 tune to several ambient themes.
GoldenEye is definitely not a game you play once and put down, and it's not just because of the great multiplayer gameplay. There are a total of 20 single player missions (18 in the main story and two more bonus missions), and three difficulty modes: Agent (easy), Secret Agent (more challenging), and 00 Agent (much more difficult). By completing certain levels within certain times in a specific difficulty, you'll unlock cheats, which can be used in single player for fun (not for completing missions), or in multiplayer for added effect. One particularly interesting cheat is DK mode, which makes all the characters look like Donkey Kong - small bodies, and enormous heads.
One of the greatest FPS games ever made, possibly the greatest on any console, GoldenEye is legendary for a reason. It may not have the complexity or feature sets of today's shooters, but it's still good, old-fashioned shooting fun.
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